Urban backyards and memories in the interior of São Paulo

• Grant number: 20/11208-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning
• Principal Investigator: Joana D'Arc de Oliveira
• Grantee: Fabiana Oliveira Palmeira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Carlos (IAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Analyzes urban black yards in the interior of São Paulo. Currently, research on African and Afro-Brazilian practices has gained increasing prominence in academies. In the field of architecture and urbanism, researches has brought to light the contributions of black people to the history of these areas in Brazil. The surveys, mappings, records and analyzes of these contributions unveil the histories of black people in national soils, who, since the slave system was in force, have sought different ways to express and preserve their cultural manifestations, such as drumming in terraces to dry the coffee and prayers in the slave quarters. In the post-abolition period, the conquest of freedom motivated the displacement of significant black contingents towards other regions, notably in areas located on the fringes of the city, divided by landowners, who, in the interior of São Paulo, were mostly large coffee landowners. In these areas that were urbanized, the plots made available, although large, were accessible to the less favored classes, enabling black men and women to acquire them for the construction of houses and congregate several buildings and generations of family members in a single lot. According to Joana Oliveira (2018), in addition to the buildings, on this beaten earth floor, cultural, religious and subsistence activities were and still are carried out, where the elders transmit orally to the youngest knowledges and stories of their origins and resistances. Despite the criminalization strategies undertaken by the State and civil society, black families maintained their cultural and religious practices preserved, especially in these spaces, including dances, songs, capoeira and candomblé. Even today, there is the cultivation of fruit trees, healing and protective herbs, vegetables, some cereals and the raising of pigs and chickens, responsible for contributing and, very often, ensuring food and sustenance for the families established there. In this sense, such spaces emerge as urban black territories and are constituted and integrated into Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage and therefore require their mapping and documentation.